Last November I bought a mad looking corm/bulb type thing at Shannon’s for around £7. I loved the look of it at the time and also knowing it would grow into a 6ft high monster made me think, “I’ve got to have one of those!” But for the life of me, I can’t remember what it was called. Any ideas?
Well I’d forgotten all about the bulb until last week when I noticed this poking through the earth in one of the beds.Then in the space of a week, it’s grown into this. It reminds me of those things that came out of the spacecraft in the old version of The War Of The Worlds. Madness!
In one of this month’s popular gardening magazines there’s a feature about making your own seed box with various drawers and compartments. I know I’m a bit OCD when it comes to my seed container so I can’t talk, but making one out of sheets of plywood with “25 sections which I am going to put into alphabetical order” is taking it a bit too far I reckon. What’s wrong with an old biscuit tin?
Here’s a couple of tunes (thanks to David Rodigan as ever for these!) to stick on loud while looking through your (possibly chaotic and in a non-alphabetical order) seed tin and sorting out what’s going in as the growing season is near enough with us. Happy seed tin exploring!
It was an afternoon of good weather today so I tipped around in the garden and finished off clearing the back bed and it was nice to see it clear of weeds for once.
I’m giving the bed a bit of a rest of veg this year so unusually it’s going be full of flowers if all goes to plan. This afternoon I sowed a load of cornflowers called ‘blue boy’ in the first quarter of the bed (600 seeds off ebay for £1.50 including p+p, cheap or what?)
Talking of seeds and good value, earlier this morning I picked up a copy of “Grow your own” magazine for £4.99 for the free packets of veg seeds (little gem lettuce, basil, courgette, kale, carrot and celeriac) from the WH Smiths in Lewisham. They were also selling cut-price Terry’s Chocolate Oranges and Ferrero Rocher on a special make-shift stall outside the store because of Mother’s day tomorrow. Aaahhhhh!
And to end on, a lovely tune in a hip-hop/reggae style from the great Protoje called Criminal. A tune to play whacked up loud while searching magazine emporiums for gardening mags with free vegetable seeds as it’s “that time of year”. Big up Rodigan for playing this the other week. More of the instrumental version please.
And thanks to youtube, a nice live version of the tune.
Here’s a super guest mix from The Go! Team from last week’s excellent Tom Ravenscroft show on BBC Radio 6 music. A mix of all sorts of madness!
One to play very loud in the greenhouse late at night while repotting plants (with just a torch as a light source) especially when there’s a full moon. That’ll get the neighbours talking! The mix is available here.
A big thanks to the weather for the weekend just gone and it looks like spring has finally sprung! Things are certainly on their way, I’ve got some healthy looking leek seedlings, black poppies and garlic in the glass terrarium I found in the street a couple of years ago (above) and the bulbs are starting to come up in the found empty champagne case too (below).Early Sunday morning I popped into Shannon’s (ta to Paul, Araba and Alexi for the lift) and got myself three bags of multi-purpose compost to put into the new raised bed (below) made out of a couple of free scaffolding boards procured from Paul a couple of weeks earlier. So thanks to a cheap argos drill, some spare wood and a quarter of a tin of fence protector left over from last year, it’s now a home for beetroot, carrots and climbing french beans. And look at the runner bean cane wigwam, that’s been put in a bit early!And here’s a tune dedicated to all who put in a few hours over the weekend with their mowers, garden forks, spades, trowels and (new pair of) loppers while enjoying the good weather in their gardens and allotments! Roll on the spring!
Damian Marley – Hard Work (Dedicated to all Westminster City Council gardeners)
The London Garden Book A-Z – Abigail Willis – Metro
I popped into Charing Cross library last week and between playing “spot the sleeping person” and the “where’s the spare chair?”, I came across this great book in the gardening section.
It’s an interesting read about gardens around the capital circa 2012. It’s been well researched and features everything from Kew, The Barbican Conservatory, beekeeping on top of The Royal Festival Hall to lesser known gardens like Roots and Shoots (where I did an introduction to beekeeping course with the LBKA a few years ago), The Food From The Sky growing project on top of a supermarket in Crouch End (sadly no more), Mark from Vertical Veg (who’s also well into his music), the Horniman Museum and Gardens (up the road from us who have a great annual plant sale) and even a traffic island in E9 that went to pot but now been planted out in a guerrilla gardening style, a great Zen garden in Acton and a whole lot more. Even Shannon’s our local garden centre is mentioned in it. What more do you want?
A great book documenting gardens in the capital from the big to the small!
Last night I popped into Lidl and got a right old bargain, a pair of expandable loppers for £7.99. How good is that? I’ve always wanted a pair but never got round to getting some until now.
What was funny though, was when the chap on the checkout saw them he made a big thing out of it, pulling them apart and posing with them like it was a bullworker from the 1970’s, much to the annoyance of the twenty people behind me in the queue. Very odd!
He then said to us very matter-of-factly, “Do keep your receipt Sir, and remember you do have up to fourteen days to bring them back if they break.” Does he know something I don’t?
I heard this classic Dennis Brown tune today on soundcloud, off a recording of a dance with Saxon soundsytem and David Rodigan from the mid 1980’s and what a tune! That led me to recall a lovely recut of it by Wayne Wade from around 1978.
Wayne Wade – Now I Know – Vivian Jackson (1978)
If you love the rhythm as much as I do, listen to the below mix and a half from the excellent Algoriddim which features cut after cut after cut, starting with the great Alton Ellis and featuring a personal favourite of mine, Z90 Skank by Trinity.
Some tunes to chill out to and dream of some good weather soon, so you can go out and tip around in the garden.
A big thanks to Lewisham Gardens and Golightly Gardens for organising the great seed swap in Deptford yesterday. I got nearly everything from my wants list and there were loads of great seeds available. These events are always good for meeting fellow gardeners, getting growing advice and for picking up those odd varieties of seeds.
I got sunflowers, sweet peas, hollyhocks, poppies, foxgloves and gaillardia in the flower line. I wasn’t looking for too much veg as I’m happily sorted for those after getting a bargain of mixed veg seeds on ebay the other month.
I did get a couple of varieties of basil (bush and sweet genovese), french beans and a beefsteak tomato called Marmande which looked like it could be an extra from that silly 70’s film Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.I was on my way out when I met a lovely chap who was looking for the seed swap who worked for Lewisham council. He told me later after a long shift at the council all he wants to do is spend the rest of his day up his allotment. Great stuff! Back in the seedswap he shared a wide variety of seeds (and I don’t even think he wanted anything in return as far as I can remember) and I got a tomato called Black Krim from Russia!
When I finally left I visited the new and improved Dig This Nursery in Clifton Rise, New Cross after being ribbed by Mihaly (who was doing a talk at the seed swap about growing veg in small spaces) for not being up to speed about knowing that their shop has moved. Sometimes I find it hard enough to keep up with what’s going in me own small world let alone outside it! They’ve even opened a new shop in Rye Lane in the parish of Peckham too.
In the New Cross shop is a second hand record section where I flicked through some old reggae singles (£3 each) where they had a copy of the late great Nicky Thomas tune Love of the Common People (to hear the original jamaican version without the strings click here). On the B side of that well-known single is the tune below which I was reminded about by The Rhythm Doctor when he span it at one of our events at Limewharf last year.
And thanks to the excellent Dancecrasher website (from The Tighten Up Crew) here’s the vocal version of the above from Slim Smith. Well I never knew that!
Thanks again to Lewiham Gardens and Golightly Gardens for this event. More seed swaps please!
I heard two great gardening tips this week. The first was from Penny Golightly (of the great Golightly Gardens website) who mentioned the free tomato seed offer from Heinz. It’s only a limited thing but have a look at their Facebook page here and see if you’re lucky!
Also on last week’s Gardening with Tim & Joe show on BBC Radio Leeds, Joe Maiden mentioned rather than buying a pack of seeds especially for pea shoots from the major seed sellers (around £2.50), go to the supermarket and buy a packet of dried peas which are the same thing and a whole lot cheaper!I had a day off Thursday and managed to do a little bit of gardening before the rain came and it was so nice to be back out there. I cleared the bed next to the pond (Pic above – fish courtesy of Lewisham pet shop, bought a few years ago and they’ve multiplied a bit since then. God knows how they survive in a rusty old water tank!)
The reason I was out there was I bought a load of bluebells a fortnight ago which were bought “in the green” (as I missed the proper bulb planting time in the autumn) so when the postlady delivered them on Thursday morning they were live (with roots and shoots and all) so they had to go in. Let’s hope the birds or the squirrels don’t pull them up!
Things are on the move, the onion sets, garlic and parsley under the top half of the old kitchen door are starting to show signs of life and the tomato and pepper seeds I stuck in a few weeks ago indoors are on their way. It won’t be long now, roll on the warm weather!
Last November I bought a mad looking corm/bulb type thing at Shannon’s for around £7. I loved the look of it at the time and also knowing it would grow into a 6ft high monster made me think, “I’ve got to have one of those!” But for the life of me, I can’t remember what it was called. Any ideas?
Then in the space of a week, it’s grown into this. It reminds me of those things that came out of the spacecraft in the old version of The War Of The Worlds. Madness!
And here’s a tune dedicated to all who put in a few hours over the weekend with their mowers, garden forks, spades, trowels and (new pair of) loppers while enjoying the good weather in their gardens and allotments! Roll on the spring!
Weeds up to me knees 